Abstract
This paper explores the localisation strategies of Chinese immigrants in Belgium by means of a biographical approach. As the migrants’ life stories involve actions and reactions to the structural constraints and temporal dis/continuity of a new society, their strategies reflect how they make sense of their present situation, how they interpret cultural encounters, and how they cope with the socio-economic challenges of their host society.
The first part of the paper deals with conventional expatriate questions by asking how interviewees settled into their host society and what social, economic, and cultural consequences (Heisler, Migration theory—talking across disciplines, 2000) they experienced as Chinese citizens adapting to the European Union. In the second part of the paper, in line with the biographical approach, one interviewee’s life history is introduced and her story is told to report how a personal experience of localisation is biographically meaningful with reference to the Biographical-Narrative Interpretative Method (BNIM). The third part of the paper discusses the thematic concerns that emerged from the collected life stories, and the fourth part of the paper presents the types and variation in strategies formulated by each interviewee. The concluding section of the paper describes implications for both the theoretical and empirical levels of research and argues that a biographical approach to migration experiences can contribute to the process of policymaking.
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Notes
- 1.
Records of personal interviews with Mr. Huang in fieldwork conducted from 1996 to 1998.
- 2.
However, some cases show that the mainlanders from Taiwan took advantage of acquired Belgian citizenship to help their families in China emigrate. Without a foreign connection, it was impossible for Chinese citizens to go abroad before 1975.
- 3.
As the pro-independent Democratic People’s Party (DPP) won the presidential election in 2000, it was in a position to enable the re-orientation of overseas Chinese policies. Many pro-nationalist overseas Chinese organizations were not satisfied with the DPP’s political stand while the long exiled pro-independence overseas Taiwanese groups started to give support to the Overseas Compatriot Affairs Committee (OCAC). The relations between OCAC and overseas Chinese and Taiwanese residents were thus challenged by the controversy surrounding Taiwanese identity, low trust, and the restructuring of power among overseas Chinese and Taiwanese organizations.
- 4.
There is an expression, ‘Come, Come, Come and Come to Tai Da (National Taiwan University), Go, Go, Go and Go to America’, directed towards capable university students, in particular students from top Taiwanese universities. Western Europe certainly was another choice, but less interesting to Taiwanese students because of language proficiency.
- 5.
Hua’s family may be characterised as a transnational network: her parents and elder sister live in Taiwan, one brother lives in Vienna, and another brother and sister settled in the United States. To facilitate communication among intra-and intergenerational family members, Mandarin is accepted by the parents as the primary domestic language by the parents.
- 6.
Interview with Ms. S, head of a government-sponsored institution for multicultural integration in 2005.
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Liu Huang, LC. (2014). A Biographical Study of Chinese Immigrants in Belgium: Strategies for Localisation. In: Zhang, J., Duncan, H. (eds) Migration in China and Asia. International Perspectives on Migration, vol 10. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8759-8_13
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